Running with the Demon - Terry Brooks [196]
Within her body, the magic hummed and vibrated, a living thing. She had never gotten this close to it for this long. She could feel its power building, working its way through her, heat and sound and motion. It was like trying to direct the movements of a cat; you felt it could spring away at any moment.
“Jared, look at me,” she whispered.
Careful, careful. The magic prodded gently, insistently. Sweat beaded on Nest’s forehead, and her chest and throat tightened with her efforts.
“I’m here, Jared. Can you hear me?”
Time slipped away. She lost track of how much, her concentration focused on making contact with him, on breaking through the shell into which he had retreated. Once, she heard someone approach, but the steps turned away before they reached Jared’s room. Her concentration tightened. She forgot about Robert, about the nurses, about everything. She stayed where she was, not looking up, not shifting her gaze away from Jared, not even for a moment. She refused to give up. She kept talking to him, saying his name, using her magic to bump him gently, to open the door to his safehold just a crack.
“Jared,” she said over and over. “It’s me, Nest.”
Until finally his eyes shifted to find hers, and he replied in a hoarse whisper, “Hey, Nest,” and she knew he was going to be all right.
On a Greyhound traveling west between Denver and Salt Lake City, John Ross sat staring out into the night, watching the lights of ranches and towns hunkered down in the empty flats below the Rockies flash by in the darkness. He sat alone at the rear of the bus, his staff propped up against the seat beside him, the roar of the engine and the whine of the wheels drowning out the snoring of his fellow passengers. It was nearing midnight, and he was the only one awake.
He sighed wearily. Soon he would sleep, too. Because he would have to. Because the demands of his body would give him no choice.
Almost two days had passed since he had left Nest Freemark standing in the rain in Sinnissippi Park. He had gone back to the hotel, gathered up his things, and waited in the lobby for the early-morning bus. When it arrived, he had climbed aboard without a backward glance and ridden away. Already his memory of Hopewell and her people was beginning to fade, the larger picture shrinking to small, bright moments that he could tuck away and carry with him. Old Bob, greeting him that first day at Josie’s, believing him Caitlin’s friend. Gran, her sharp old eyes raking across him as she sought to see through the fa9ade he had created. Josie Jackson, sleepy-eyed and warm, lying next to him on their last day. Pick, the sylvan, the keeper of Sinnissippi Park. Daniel. Wraith. The demon.
But mostly there was Nest Freemark, a fourteen-year-old girl who could work magic and by doing so come to terms with the truth about her family, when anything less would have destroyed her. He could see her face clearly, her freckles and quirky smile and curly dark hair. He would remember the long, smooth strides she took when she ran and the way she stood her ground when it mattered. In a world in which so much of what he encountered only served to reinforce his fears that the future of his dreams was an inevitability, Nest gave him hope. When so many others might have succumbed to their fear and despair, Nest had not. She represented a little victory when measured against the enormity of the battle being fought by the Word and the Void, but sometimes little victories made the difference. Little victories, like the small events that tipped the scales in the balance of life, really could change the world.
I wish I could have been your father, he had said, and he had meant it.
He wondered if he would ever see her again.
He straightened in his seat, looking down the aisle past the slouched forms of the sleepers to where the driver hunched over the steering wheel, eyes on the road. In the bright glare of the headlights, the highway was an endless concrete ribbon unrolling out of the black. Morning was still far away; it was time to sleep. He had not slept since he had left